Are LFC in danger of causing their own downfall?

With multiple sources such as this one persisting with reports that Dejan Lovren may be about to leave for Roma, I'd like to ask the question just how big an adverse impact that could potentially have on our season. Would it be akin to shooting ourself in the foot?

Certainly Lovren himself is a player who divides opinion. At one end of the scale you have those who think he's a complete liability and at the other end there are people who feel he's a tidy enough defender who they'd like to stay at Liverpool as a solid back up option. Then you have the middle ground opinion such as the one I hold in feeling Lovren is pretty good but prone to costly mistakes in important matches and could definitely be improved upon. However, irrespective of any of that, I feel we definitely shouldn't be selling him now at this late stage when we can't replace him.

Our defensive options were hotly debated this summer, some wished to see us strengthen while others felt we were well catered for. What no one said was that we should do nothing and then at the last minute sell one of our senior defenders. Okay we did sign centre back Sepp van den Berg but while he looks an exciting prospect for the future, at just seventeen years of age surely no one expects him to jump straight into our senior team. Not even as a backup player.

To make things worse two of our other centre backs, Gomez and Matip, have huge question marks in terms of their susceptibility to injury. If Lovren were to leave, we are then almost bound to find ourselves in a defensive injury crisis at some stage of the season. For that reason I would rate any such action as a daft one on our part and rank the risk of it causing harm to our season as 8/10. With 10 being almost a certainty to cause us result effecting problems.

What do you guys think. If Lovren is sold between now and next Monday, how would you assess and score the potential for it to cause us issues?